Spinning the Zip to Zap: Student Journalist
Responsibility and Vulnerability in the Late 1960s

Richard Shafer

Volume 13, 2000

Abstract

This media study presents the historical, cultural, and social
context in which a failed spring-break festival, the Zip to Zap,
occurred in rural North Dakota in May 1969. It addresses factors of
student press responsibility with regard to conceptualizing and
promoting the event, and of the failure of the national press to move
beyond stereotypical representations of both college students, and of
rural American attitudes and behaviors. Zip to Zap coverage provides
a valuable case study of the tension between forces and expressions
of social change, and those of the status quo in American society in
the late 1960s. This tension is apparent from North Dakota and
national press accounts of active and often violent student
resistance to major American foreign policies, manifestations of
radical domestic social change, and with regard to a perceived
generational assault on revered American political, social, economic,
and religious institutions.

Introduction

This article looks at how student newspaper journalists at several
geographically isolated universities in the Upper Midwest reacted
both personally and editorially to the larger social and political
forces impacting the nation in the turbulent spring of 1969. The Zip
to Zap, a grand failure of a music and beer festival promoted by
campus newspapers, is used as a case study to illustrate the often
euphoric and challenging circumstances under which student
journalists carried out their information filtering and gatekeeping
duties in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

It also outlines the social and historical context in which the
Zip to Zap took place, particularly in regard to the attitudes of
college students at the time, and in regard to the American public's
general perception of them. The research primarily relies on
historical narrative to explain the evolution of the Zip to Zap as a
representative social and cultural event. The historical narrative is
appropriate here because it goes beyond the mere recitation of facts.
According to Harvard historian Richard Marius, such a method provides
a strong sense of the existing tensions and resolution of those
tensions, to capture important elements of time and of place (Marius,
1995).

This historical narrative is extended with excerpts and analysis
from primary sources in the form of newspapers and interviews. This
method allows us to engage in an analysis of media coverage of the
Zip to Zap phenomenon, addressing important journalistic factors of:
(1) student press responsibility with regard to conceptualizing and
promoting an event seemingly destined to fail; (2) state and local
press complicity in its promotion; (3) the failure of the national
press to move beyond stereotypical representations of student
attitudes and behaviors in reporting the Zip to Zap, and (4) the
failure of national press coverage to move beyond condescending and
similarly stereotypical representations of isolated and rural sectors
of the United States, such as North Dakota.

Media coverage of the Zip to Zap well illustrates the tension
between forces and expressions of social change, and forces and of
expressions of the status quo colliding within American society in
the years surrounding 1969. This tension is apparent from national
and statewide media accounts of active and often violent student
resistance to major American foreign policies, from accounts of
radical domestic social change, and also from media descriptions of a
generational assault on revered American political, social, economic,
and religious institutions. By engaging in a broader analysis of the
Zip to Zap phenomenon, this study makes unique sociological and media
studies contributions to what has been primarily a history-centered
literature on this important but quirky North Dakota event.

This article first documents the conditions of student unrest and
political expression in the United States in the late 1960s and early
1970s. It then offers a detailed analysis of relevant media coverage
of such expressions and events. It particularly focuses on such
coverage appearing in the North Dakota State University Spectrum,
because the Spectrum staff is credited with conceptualizing,
promoting, and organizing the Zip to Zap event. Coverage of the event
is also examined from the three largest North Dakota daily newspapers
(the Grand Forks Herald, the Bismarck Tribune and the
Forum of Fargo-Moorhead), as well as from the Dakota
Student of the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks (UND),
for the two-week period prior to and during the Zip to Zap weekend
(approximately April 26 to May 13, 1969).

These student newspapers are used to contrast the expectation in
North Dakota for a traditional and normal college spring break event,
with what would seem to be a more logical expectation for a
disorderly and militant gathering of thousands of college students,
given the general instability of America's college campuses in 1969,
and given the violence and police reaction to large student
gatherings nationwide. Certainly student activism and political
expression was on a steep rise throughout the United States and
Western Europe that spring, and students at NDSU and UND were fully
informed.

Media portrayal of campus disorder

During the late 1960s and early 1970s college campuses nationwide
were in disorder, as thousands of students protested, rioted and
boycotted classes. National, state, and local government agencies, as
well as the mass media, were reacting as if the nation and its
campuses were on the eve of an Armageddon. Newspaper and television
reporting for that spring conveyed alarm at what seemed to be an
approaching domestic cultural, racial, and generational civil war,
while on the international front, the American mass media presented
almost daily evidence of an impending debacle for American military
forces in Vietnam.

Dissident college students justified violence as a means to effect
change, and particularly to end the Vietnam War. International and
domestic political, social, and economic conditions seemed to warrant
disrupting normal campus life, shutting down campuses, avoiding
conscription, and even sabotaging campus research facilities and ROTC
buildings. By late 1969, National Guard units had been called to
intervene in over 200 domestic civil disorders across the nation. The
Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest, released
September 26, 1970, reflected this national alarm:

The crisis on American campuses has no parallel in the
history of the nation. This crisis has roots in divisions of
American society as deep as any since the Civil War. The divisions
are reflected in violent acts and harsh rhetoric, and in the
enmity of those Americans who see themselves as occupying opposing
camps (The Report on the President's Commission on Campus
Unrest,1970).

The report further states that the level of violence on American
campuses was steadily rising, that students and authorities had been
killed and injured, and that valuable public and private property and
scholarly works had been damaged or destroyed. The commission called
for a national cease-fire, adding that too many Americans had begun
to justify violence as a means toward either effecting change, or of
holding onto traditions. The report said that too many had forsaken
the values and sense of shared humanity uniting Americans, and that
campus disorder reflected this national condition. It added that a
new culture was emerging, primarily among students, in which
membership was often manifested by differences in dress and lifestyle
(The Report on the President's Commission on Campus Unrest, 1970).
The image conveyed by the press in the late 1960s and early 1970s was
of college students in rebellion against the government, as well as
against the traditional norms and values of American society.

There appears to have been a vocal and articulate minority of
North Dakota college students who were radicalized along the
ideological and political lines of the most vocal and expressive
American students of their time, and this minority seems to have been
in control of the campus press at the major institutions in the
region. Their ideas were widely disseminated and were apparently
effective in radicalizing other students.

For instance, in the March 22 issue of the NDSU Spectrum,
staff reporters Kathy Anderson and Sandy Scheel published a lengthy
feature titled: "Student, Worker Uprising: Behind the Barricades in
France," based on interviews in Fargo with Elisabeth Caron, a
visiting Sorbonne University student, who had been jailed during the
traumatic student riots in Paris in November 1968. There was also a
report of 400 students demonstrating against military recruiters
being located in the Student Union at what was then Moorhead State
College (MSC; now Minnesota State University Moorhead), just across
the Red River in Minnesota.

In September 1969, MSC Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
members published in the campus newspaper a four-point "plan of
attack" calling for minority student recruitment, abolition of the
ROTC, more relevant curriculum, and for an end to what they termed
authoritarian policies governing student life. In May 1970, MSC
students voted to strike, in a show of sympathy for students killed
by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University. MSC President
Roland Dille allowed 400 students to leave the school early in the
spring of that semester without penalty, so they wouldn't continue to
disrupt the rest of the campus. Dille had incurred student wrath the
year before by suspending publication of the student paper, the
Mistic, for publishing what he considered to be profane
material. For North Dakota anti-nuclear advocates and those
remembering the state's long struggle for political and economic
independence, there was much to protest.

Opposition to North Dakota's new
dependency on federal defense spending

On May 16, 1970, while more than 3,000 anti-missile protesters
gathered at the University of North Dakota (UND) at Grand Forks,
about 1,500 more gathered at the site of the planned Safeguard
missile base near Nekoma, N.D. Joining the Nekoma group were Chicago
Seven defendants John Froines and Dave Dellinger. Despite such
protests, the state itself remained a good friend to the military, as
well as to national defense industries. North Dakota's
representatives in Washington continued to promote the state as a
hospitable location for defense and weapons spending.

Only weeks before the Zip to Zap, the Nixon Administration
announced its decision to build the first of the Safeguard
anti-ballistic missile installations in North Dakota. The
underpopulated state was already home to two major Air Force bases.
In reporting North Dakota's new allocation of missiles, Newsweek said
that between 1962 and 1967 the U.S. Air Force sowed 1,000 Titan and
54 Titan Two intercontinental ballistic missiles beneath the
"protective soil" of states such as North Dakota (Newsweek, April 7,
1969). It seemed to those opposing the expanding military presence in
the state that North Dakota had sold out on its radical past. In a
postscript to Elwyn Robinson's History of North Dakota, first
published in 1966, UND historian Jerome Tweton writes that:

Robinson stressed how the state's remoteness, dependence,
and colonial economic status shaped its politics, especially, and
most remarkably, by giving it a vital agrarian radical tradition.
During the past generation, dependency and economic colonialism
have continued to shape the politics of the state, but agrarian
radicalism has disappeared, largely because the relationship
between North Dakota and the federal government has changed
dramatically (Robinson, 1966).

Robinson wrote that before the 1930s the federal government
frequently served as an impediment to what North Dakotans wanted to
accomplish, carrying them into war when they desired peace, and
helping to elect a conservative minority to undermine the Nonpartisan
League's success with socialist experiments on behalf of North Dakota
farmers, beginning with electing the radical populist Lynn J. Frazier
as governor in 1916 (Robinson, 1966).

Populist and socialist movements in the state were dealt a heavy
blow with the repression of those opposed to America entering World
War I, and with plunging crop prices following that war. In North
Dakota the Great Depression immediately followed the agricultural
recession of the 1920s. A depressed farm economy continued until the
eve of World War II. Most of the North Dakota college students of the
1960s were of a generation that was less than a decade removed from
the kind of poverty that these economic troubles brought to their
communities and families.

Still, most North Dakota students of the late 1960s were not
themselves victims of such troubling times. By 1969, the farm
economy, which drove the state, was very much improved and was about
to have some of its best years. The strong Air Force presence in the
state was a big boost to the economy. So, it was a relatively well
off, perhaps economically complacent, and legitimately optimistic
generation of students who were attending North Dakota's colleges and
universities in the late 1960s. These were some of the major
political and historical circumstances when the idea for the Zip to
Zap festival was spawned.

The campus press promotes the Zip to Zap

The conceptualization and planning of the Zip to Zap indicates
that college students, particularly in the northern Midwest, were
trying to carry on normal campus life much as their older siblings,
parents and grandparents had when they were college students. The Zip
to Zap was promoted nationwide as the "Grand Festival of Light and
Love." It was to be held on the weekend of May 10 and 11, 1969, at
the North Dakota coal-mining town of Zap, population 250. The Zip to
Zap was national news before the festival began, but the event got
even more media attention after between 2,000 and 3,000 students were
dispersed by more than 500 North Dakota National Guardsmen at the
festival. The student planners never intended that it would turn
confrontational, but the press had made a lot of promises organizers
and Zap citizens couldn't deliver on. The origin of the idea for the
Zip to Zap has not been fully established.

Chuck Stroup, 1969 NDSU student body president, said in a
telephone interview that he came up with the idea for the Zip to Zap
and "went downstairs" from his student government office to suggest
it to the NDSU Spectrum newspaper staff. He explained that he
was motivated by being unable to afford to join his sister in going
to Florida for spring break that year. Stroup said he intended to
promote a cheap alternative near his hometown of Hazen, N.D., where
he is now a bank president (Stroup, 1999).

Stroup said there was a local joke that had to do with having to
pass through the towns of Zap, Gackle and Mott to get anywhere in
North Dakota. Stroup claims to have purchased the first classified
ads in the Spectrum announcing the festival, but admits that he has
forgotten many of the details about those ads and the subsequent
publicity and promotion. Kevin Carvell, NDSU Spectrum editor
in 1969, remembers that it was a page one Spectrum article that "lit
the fuse" of what became the Zip to Zap. It reported that Zap,
located in the valley of the beautiful Knife River, planned to
enthusiastically welcome students. The article proclaimed that
students were expected from all over the Midwest, and that Zap would
become the "Lauderdale of the North" (Carvell, 1999).

Stroup says he believes the Spectrum "did a wonderful job"
of promoting the Zip to Zap, and that the reason the festival got out
of hand was that there was little knowledge in North Dakota about
organizing large events and about utilizing proper crowd control
procedures. Upper Great Plains states, according to Stroup, may have
been a decade behind the rest of the nation with regard to
confronting student unrest. He said anti-Vietnam war and other
1960s-era protests were rare on campuses from Texas to North Dakota.
"North Dakota students weren't ready to protest," Stroup said about
the spring of 1969. Stroup, as head of student government, may have
been expressing the dominant and conservative views and practices of
the majority of North Dakota college students at the time.

Such conditions might help explain why, despite the existence of
radical and activist groups of students on North Dakota and
neighboring Minnesota campuses, the Zip to Zap seems to have been
conceived and planned without a political or social activist agenda.
Subtitled, "Grand Festival of Life and Love," the Zip to Zap,
according to 1968-1969 NDSU Spectrum editor Kevin Carvell, was never
intended to be a political event. Carvell is quoted in a 1999
retrospective feature article in the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead
as saying that from the beginning the Zip to Zap was to be a "lark."
He says, however, that it was a lark that went awry on a grand scale.
"Anyone who stops to think about this can see it was destined to be
one of the great fiascoes of our time," Carvell lamented in the Forum
article (the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, 1999).

If the NDSU student paper, and Carvell as editor, exhibited
irresponsibility in encouraging thousands of potentially drunken
college students to descend on the remote village of Zap, then the
national and community media were complicit in further hyping the
event, although they did convey some concern about the hazards. The
Forum, for instance, in a May 3 page one story, noted that
Governor Bill Guy had conferred with Highway Patrol officials about
the anticipated influx of thousands of college students. Guy is
reported to have been primarily concerned with traffic flow in and
out of Zap. The governor acknowledged in the story that no one could
predict how many students would show up. Major General LeClair
Melhouse, state adjutant general, said he hoped there would be no
need for any National Guardsmen, and the governor commented that if
National Guardsmen were needed, they would probably be utilized for
traffic control (the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, 1969).

The Bismarck Tribune remained guardedly optimistic about
the approaching Zip to Zap festival, when on April 29 it ran a
page-one story saying, "Destiny is about to rear either its beautiful
or tumultuous head, or both, May 10, to project this quiet Mercer
County city of 300 into national fame in a coincidence of double
exposure. Thousands of collegians plan to descend upon Zap in a
zip-in, zap-out frenzy of welcoming spring, while shedding their
winter blues." An accompanying photo shows Zap Mayor Norman Fuchs
playing with the Zip-Zap, a new toy that Wham-O Corp. was launching
in conjunction with the North Dakota festival (Bismarck Tribune,
1969).

The Zap story was picked up by the Associated Press and
disseminated nationally. The festival organizers, basking in the
unexpected publicity, appear to have been oblivious to the potential
for violence, disorder, and destruction. The town of Zap began to
optimistically prepare for thousands of spring break celebrants, and
citizens expressed optimism for a resulting economic boom. Mayor
Fuchs is quoted as saying afterward, "We thought, well, we'll put
ourselves on the map here" (Bismarck Tribune, 1969). The town began
to stock up on beer and the makings for "zapburgers."

When the Zip to Zap turned into a rowdy beer bash, brawl, and riot
by the first night (May 9, 1969), requiring deployment of five
companies of the North Dakota National Guard, the press and public
reacted with surprise and anger. The media images shocked relatively
complacent upper Midwesterners, especially North Dakotans with
children and grandchildren attending the state's colleges and
universities (Bretling, 1991).

Jerry Cooper and Glenn Smith, in their history of the North Dakota
National Guard, report that by that Friday night, 2,000 youths had
reached the town. When temperatures dropped to below freezing by 9
p.m., a bonfire was started on Zap's Main Street, using wood from the
floor of a building that had been demolished long before the
festival.1

A melee began, eventually destroying the interior of a tavern and
a café. Students danced, sang, embraced, and brawled. They
passed out, vomited, urinated in the open, and wandered deliriously
around the town. One NDSU student was reported to have attacked a
National Guardsman with a log chain. The Guard reportedly reacted by
pinning him against a car and pummeling him with their rifle
butts.

This appears to have been a rare incident. The Guard had been
instructed to use only minimum force and to avoid alienating the
civilian populace. Guardsmen had been instructed not to exchange
epithets or profane language with civilians, and only police were
allowed to search and detain the students. Because of national
events, there was some uneasiness among state authorities about how
the National Guard would perform at Zap.

Cooper and Smith further report that because of the poor
performance of the Michigan National Guard during the Detroit riots
of 1967, Governor Guy, state police, and local military authorities
were cautious about diffusing the situation at Zap without
over-reacting. National Guard Commander General Melrose gave his
officers a thorough review of the latest "aid to civil authority"
procedures. He was compelled by federal directives, which were a
response to the urban riots of the mid-1960s. The Department of the
Army had recently directed all Army National Guard Units to complete
32 hours of riot-duty training in 1969, and to hold 16 hours of
refresher training each year afterward. The federal government also
issued riot-control equipment to all state militias as part of their
annual equipment allotments.

Cooper and Smith report that the North Dakota National Guard had
taken its riot-control training in 1967, but still lacked riot
batons, gas masks, and chemical crowd-control agents. North Dakota
Guard units holding drill May 9, 1969, were to review that training.
Commanders were reminded that it would be the first time any of them
had actually participated in an exercise in this type of crowd
control.

By Saturday (May 10) at daybreak, 500 Guardsman had surrounded
Zap, and 200 of them moved into the town at 6:30 a.m. with fixed
bayonets, although less than 200 students were awake and celebrating.
The Bismarck Tribune reported that the Guard woke up and dispersed
about 1,000 visitors sleeping in cars, ravines, bushes, and on the
ground around Zap. It made for good television images, including the
lead story that evening on the CBS Evening News, with Walter Cronkite
reporting (Cooper, 1986).

Cooper and Smith place much of the blame for the violence and
disorder at Zap on the student and state newspapers promoting it,
quoting a Bismarck Tribune editorial of May 8, 1969, as saying, "We
hope Zap gets college students from all over the country, and that
the boys and girls have a good time." Cooper and Smith go on to
say:

North Dakota's rural economy and homogeneous white
population had shielded it from the turbulent and violent racial
upheavals that struck many cities during the 1960s. The state's
acknowledged conservative social and political nature had also
exempted it from the sometimes violent war protests and college
campus demonstrations. North Dakotans could look out at an
apparently disorderly, riotous nation and take comfort that old
values, including patriotism and respect for authority, still
prevailed on the northern plains (Cooper, 1986).

The resignation of the NDSU Spectrum editor and the
fiasco at Zap

In predominately rural and relatively isolated North Dakota, one
might expect to find conservative values to be transcendent among its
college students, and to find campus media reflecting such
conservatism. Examining the campus press at the state's major
universities, NDSU and UND, however, indicates that this was not the
case in 1969. The selection of stories and commentary by UND and NDSU
student editors suggests that they were generally sympathetic to the
most radical political expressions of college students across the
nation. If their own campuses were relatively peaceful, the student
journalists didn't hesitate to try to provoke action and reaction
from their more politically apathetic fellow students.

The first cryptic reference to the Zip to Zap appeared in the
February 6, 1969, NDSU Spectrum, in the classified advertising
section (The Spectrum, February 6, 1969). This began a series of such
classifieds ads for the festival. For instance, the February 13
Spectrum contained a classified reading: "WE'LL find it in Zap" (The
Spectrum, February 13, 1969); a March 20 classified read: "Drink the
BARS (all two of them) dry in ZAP. May 10 (The Spectrum, March 20,
1969)," and a March 27 classified read: "Freak out 200 citizens of
Zap on May 10 (The Spectrum, March 27, 1969). The April 3 issue had a
classified reading: "GLORIOUS FESTIVAL OF LIFE AND LOVE (translation:
BIG ORGY) WILL BE CELEBRATED MAY 10 in ZAP!" (The Spectrum, April,
1969).

This May 10 Spectrum issue was the same one in which
Spectrum editor Carvell announced his resignation. Although the
resignation was unexplained, the article did say he ran into strong
criticism during the school year for printing two-page features on
sexual morality and marijuana, and for printing "four-letter words"
in its letters-to-the-editor section. Carvell is quoted in the April
3, 1969, Spectrum article as saying:

I'm not quitting under any pressure .this is
entirely an individual decision and the criticisms of legislators,
faculty members and the good people of Fargo had nothing to do
with it (The Spectrum, April, 1969).

Carvell's last byline appears in a story in the same issue,
headlined: "Radical SDS Organizes First Chapter in State." Carvell,
who was also the founder of the NDSU Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS) chapter, reported the radical aims of SDS, and claimed
that it was the first chapter to be organized in North Dakota. He
reported that:

Within the ranks exist a variety of political positions:
socialist, anarchist, communists and humanist liberals. Each local
group is independent and responsible to no higher group. There is
no hierarchy, SDS works under the assumption that everyone is a
leader and that it is everyone's responsibility to perceive
himself as leader (Spectrum, April 1969).

Carvell, who is currently an assistant to U.S. Senator Byron
Dorgan of North Dakota, was one of several North Dakota student
editors in the late 1960s who resigned before their terms were up.
He, like his fellow editors, went on to distinguished careers in
journalism or related fields. For instance, at the University of
North Dakota at Grand Forks, student editor Mike Jacobs resigned
during the 1967-68 school year because of low grades. Jacobs is now
editor of the Grand Forks Herald, which won a Pulitzer prize for its
coverage of the Red River Flood of 1997. Jacobs was replaced as UND
Dakota Student editor by Jim Conmy. The UND student yearbook
for 1968 says about the Dakota Student under Jacobs and Conmy, "It
tried to comment on the times. It consistently screamed Vietnam at
the University, and was the principal organ for a statewide draft
resistance movement. It often reported the news."

Ted Frederickson, who followed Conmy, was also forced to resign.
Frederickson, now a professor at the University of Kansas William
Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication, says he also
suffered from low grades, but added there was a lot of political
pressure on himself and on the Dakota Student staff. At one
point a bill was introduced into the North Dakota Senate by Senator
Richard Forkner to have Frederickson removed as editor. Frederickson
said he and other North Dakota student editors followed the dictum of
Eugene Debs, "to respect tradition, but question authority."

One challenge to local authority Frederickson led was to criticize
UND for taking an alumni donation from a known anti-Semite.
Frederickson said North Dakota campuses were not viewed as radical
from either an East or West Coast perspective, partly because of the
stoic Scandinavian influence on North Dakota. "We were very
anti-establishment and anti-Dick Nixon," Frederickson said of the
student press.

Frederickson says that despite his resignation as editor, he was
never depressed or discouraged about the pressures he experienced as
a student editor. According to Frederickson, the times and the
circumstances were "exhilarating." He returned to UND to complete law
school before completing a master's in journalism at American
University in Washington, D.C. (Frederickson, April 29, 1999). In an
interview Frederickson said that the Zip to Zap was not politically
motivated.

Chuck Haga, who assumed the Dakota Student editorship when
Frederickson resigned, agrees with Frederickson, saying, "I think the
only connection between Zap and feelings about the war and other
national issues, is that Zap felt like an alternative, a release, a
good time. But I doubt if many people put a great deal of thought
into it one way or the other." Haga said it was the next year, 1970,
when UND became actively politicized, partly because of the shooting
of students by Ohio National Guardsmen at Kent State University
(Haga, 1999). Protests against North Dakota's expanding nuclear
weapons arsenal also increased in the years following Zap.

Haga said he agrees there was great pressure on student editors at
the time, and says he was well aware of the problems Moorhead State
College editor Clark was having with censorship. To express his
solidarity, Haga invited the recently-fired Clark to come to UND to
publish a special page for the MSC Mistic, to be inserted into
the UND Dakota Student. Clark took him up on the offer, and
Haga said he is still proud of defying authority with that
publication decision.

Haga said, however, that as editor he was generally careful to
negotiate and choose his battles, "rather than going down in blazing
flames," over issues like printing profanities. He explained that he
planned to make journalism a career, and that to diffuse
confrontation he would often negotiate with university administrators
who were under pressure from alumni and state legislators. Haga was a
long time Grand Forks Herald reporter and editor, and is
currently a senior reporter at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune
(Haga, 1999). Haga's caution and diplomacy may have been a reaction
to what was happening to his fellow editors at other student
newspapers in the region.

Zip to Zap coverage in the NDSUSpectrum after Carvell's resignation

The April 3, 1969, Spectrum moved beyond the cryptic
classified ads to a page one story about the coming Zip to Zap
festival that was picked up and broadcast by ABC and CBS radio
networks. Immediately below this Spectrum story is a photo of Carvell
with an accompanying article detailing his resignation as editor. The
page one Zip to Zap story, headlined: "Zap Trip to Offer Dance, Bars
[2], A Park And Zap Burgers," was written by Carvell, but was
not bylined. It is accompanied by a large map of Zap, and begins:

Tis spring. Students across the nation begin to swarm to
Fort Lauderdale, the Gulf Coast, Mexico, the Bahamas and to
wherever they can expect to find a warm sun and beaches, members
of the opposite sex, suds and momentary relief from studying. A
nationwide movement with only one exception&emdash;North Dakota
(Haga, 1999).

The story continues with a rather long and journalistically
conventional explanation of the scenic beauty of the Knife River
south of Zap. It provides further details about the town's two bars,
including selections on the local juke boxes (emphasizing the polkas
and the waltzes), and a brief discussion of the cuisine at the Zap
Café. The last paragraph, however, digresses from convention,
and states, after outlining the rock bands to play, that: "In
addition to these events, a full program of orgies, brawls, freakouts
and arrests is being planned. Do you dare miss it?"

This paragraph now appears prophetic, with the possible exception
of the promised orgies, which would have been difficult given the
bitter cold weather and the fact that most students ended up sleeping
in cars, tents, or outdoors. Such sensationalist statements, along
with those contained in the early classified ads, raise issues about
student press responsibility on the part of the Spectrum. The
April 3 Spectrum issue, however, marked the end of the
Spectrum staff-generated classifieds containing such
hedonistic overtones. Certainly escalating national coverage, such as
that provided by the Associated Press, caused the staff some
worry.

An April 17 Spectrum article, headlined, "Zap Picnic Makes
National Splash," says: "Residents of Zap reportedly are concerned
but not afraid of a possible influx of students. Mayor Norman Fuchs
doesn't want word of the trip to leak out, lest rowdy students cause
trouble in town." Zap City Attorney John Richardson is quoted in the
next paragraph as saying, "I don't know what they (students) would do
here. We have a couple of bars. I'm not sure whether there is a
restaurant now" (Spectrum, April 17, 1969).

With the Spectrum staff beginning to think about potential
problems at Zap, the exit of Carvell as editor must have been
difficult for those under him. In that last issue of his tenure as
editor, however, the Zip to Zap seemed to be the least of Carvell's
concerns. His 30-inch swan song editorial, headlined: "A Final
Comment," begins with a rather conventional lead: "Although it is not
traditional for an editor to quit in the middle of his term, it is
traditional for out-going editors to write a valedictory of sorts.
So, along with my apologies for its rambling style, here its is"
(Spectrum, April 3, 1969).

Carvell editorializes that the Spectrum under his
leadership tried to illuminate some of the political and educational
aspects of university life, rather than presenting a list of social
notes, "emphasizing queens, sweethearts, presidential teas and
dances." He goes on to say that many North Dakotans tend to have a
narrow outlook on life, viewing the world from an "ivory silo."
Carvell's final editorial continues:

We included a good deal of liberal to radical commentary
and gave extensive coverage to activities of liberally oriented
groups. This naturally irritated conservative segments of the
community who demanded equal coverage. Unfortunately, the
conservatives in this area rarely do anything more than mutter
about the activities of liberals. What's to cover? Virtually all
of the people who complained about the Spectrum's journalism were
rabid conservatives (Spectrum, April 3, 1969).

Carvell also used the April 3 Spectrum to communicate his
cynicism about his critics and the NDSU administration, as well as
his feelings about resigning as editor. In the fine print below the
list of the week's contributors to the paper, he writes about his
departure, saying:

Everyone was really choked up when they found the Head
Hippie was heading for the high country. Actually they were
overjoyed to get rid of him. Shouts of "Good riddance!" and "About
Time!" echoed through the cavernous Spectacle orifice (Spectrum,
April 3, 1969).

On April 3, the Spectrum also announced that Jerome Clark
had been removed as editor of the Moorhead State College
Mistic, in neighboring Moorhead, Minnesota. In the
Spectrum article, headlined, "Mistic Editor Withdrawn," the
paper's faculty advisor, Kathy Kraft, is quoted as saying that Clark
was too revolutionary and too leftist. MSC President Roland Dille is
reported as saying that Clark had, "shown less than good journalistic
responsibility," and that libelous content in the Mistic
throughout the year should have been questioned (The Spectrum, April
3, 1969). In the May 15 Spectrum, Dille says:

Because I do not now have confidence that future issues
of the Mistic will serve the general welfare, I find myself
with no alternative but to suspend the publication of the
Mistic until such time as this confidence has been restored
(Spectrum, May 15, 1969).

It is obvious from analyzing the issues of the Spectrum for
that spring that college editors were influenced by the miles of
national wire copy they were filtering and running, that reported
campus clashes, student boycotts, race riots, and other
confrontations across the nation. The Spectrum in that spring
of 1969 was also full of foreboding reports of the war in Southeast
Asia and the brutal civil war in Nigeria.

Racial tension was local as well as national. The April 24
Spectrum, under the headline, "Gunfire Precipitates Racial
Crisis at MSC," reported that a black student at neighboring Moorhead
State College was fired upon while in his car. Dille is quoted as
saying: "There seems no doubt whatsoever that the intent was murder,
nor is there any doubt that the motive was that the student was
black" (The Spectrum, April 24, 1969). Indeed, there were intensive
journalistic pressures on student journalists with regard to
reporting and interpreting such events.

The Fargo-Moorhead Forum's February 28, 1999, installment
of its "The 20th Century in Review" contains a retrospective article
headlined, "A time of tumult, transformation: '60s generation lived
amid pressure cooker of war, racial turmoil." The Forum quotes
a gray-bearded Carvell, now three decades older, as saying: "All of
these things on a national scale were sort of Chinese water
torture the cumulative effect of all of this slowly, very
slowly, glacially slowly, changed people's views on a lot of things"
(Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, February 28, 1999).

In a telephone interview with Carvell conducted April 26, 1999,
Carvell discussed his own frame of mind and circumstances at the time
he resigned from the Spectrum. Carvell reports that in the
spring of 1969, he, like Dakota Student editor Ted
Frederickson, did not feel dejected or depressed about his editorship
or his resignation, but rather Carvell said he felt exhausted by all
the conflicts he was having as student editor. He was also failing
classes that term.

Carvell said he felt satisfaction at accomplishing some of his
goals in regard to making the faculty and student body of NDSU more
politically and socially aware of national and international issues
and events. He explained that North Dakota was fundamentally
Republican and conservative and that he wanted to end the control of
the campus paper by those called the 'big men on campus,"
particularly the conservatives and the Greeks. He said he thought he
had to "pound the student body with a baseball bat" to get them to
wake up to what was going on in the world outside North Dakota.

Carvell said the attacks he made in the Spectrum on
conservatives were not just abstract ideological ravings, but rather
were a reaction to a formidable group on campus and in the community
who he said tried to muzzle the newspaper. He gave the example of a
campus group of supporters of presidential candidate George Wallace,
who stole the entire press run of the Spectrum, and stamped it
with "Support Wallace." Carvell lauds former NDSU faculty newspaper
adviser Ray Burington for absorbing and deflecting much of the anger
directed at the Spectrum staff by NDSU administrators and
state government officials. He said some members of the state
legislature were threatening to cut off funds to both NDSU and UND
because of the perceived radical content of their campus newspapers.
Carvell said he had to appear before the North Dakota State Board of
Higher Education to explain his actions and policies as student
editor (Carvell, April 26, 1999).

Carvell dropped out of NDSU that April of 1969, and returned to
work in his family's drugstore in Mott, N.D., taking time off to
attend the Zip to Zap event that he had conceptualized and promoted.
Carvell also spent nine years on the staff of the Forum.
Looking back 30 years, Carvell is quoted in the Forum in 1999
as saying, "Anyone who stops to think about this can see it was
destined to be one of the great fiascoes of all time" (Forum of
Fargo-Moorhead, February 28, 1999). Carvell reiterated that he and
other Spectrum staff members never conceived of the Zip to Zap
as being anything but "an absolute lark," adding that many tried to
interpret it otherwise. For instance, the Hallock, Minnesota, paper
called it a "commie plot" (Carvell, April 26, 1969).

The Zip to Zap occurred a little more than a month after Carvell
resigned as Spectrum editor. With Carvell gone, it appears the
Spectrum exhibited more caution and perhaps more
responsibility in regard to promoting the event. This change appears
in the May 1 issue, nine days before the event. In that issue, the
first of three classified ads about Zap asked:

GETTING ZAPPED IN ZAP? Think! Sleep it off in a
bus&emdash;NOT AGAINST A BRIDGE ABUTMENT. Dry place to sleep in
Zap included. $10. Phone 237-8906, or come to Student Gov't office
(Spectrum, May 1, 1969).

The second classified ad in that issue similarly offered a bus
ride to Zap and a safe place to sleep, warning of the high fines for
reckless and drunk driving, and of the danger of auto accidents.

In an article headlined, "Zap Flash," in the April 10
Spectrum, readers were reminded that spring in North Dakota is
"fraught with hazards." It is hard to determine, however, if the
paper is effective in its warning because of the usual
tongue-in-cheek tone that accompanied most accounts of the Zip to
Zap. The article said:

Latest news from Zap is enough to strike terror into the
hearts of even the staunchest lovers of North Dakota sunshine.
Spring Creek, usually a placid, mild-mannered stream, three or
four yards wide, has burgeoned into a rampaging flood tide 250
yards wide. Incorrectly labeled as the Knife River in last week's
issue, Spring Creek was incorrectly corrected to Hay Creek,
pronounced "Crick," on page four of this issue. Ignore that! The
bridge across the creek is sagging from the flood, and residents
in lower areas of Zap are presently using toilet and shower
facilities at a nearby school. But fear not, nearby inhabitants of
Golden Valley reportedly have dashed to the rescue and purchased
5000 pairs of hip-high rubber waders for all adventurous college
students (Spectrum, April 10, 1969).

The April 21, 1969, Spectrum contained a story headlined,
"Zap Model Forcibly Removed," saying that the first criticism of the
upcoming Zip to Zap had arisen in the home economics department,
where art instructor Renee Gall was ordered by a NDSU dean to remove
a model of the town used to promote the Zip to Zap, because the
evening adult education students had objected that the other displays
in the room were focused on career opportunities. Mary Ann Jureack,
identified as acting chairman of art, is quoted in the article as
saying, perhaps prophetically, "Personally, I would not sanction the
trip, as there is no sense in starting trouble where there is none"
(Spectrum, April 21, 1969).

Coverage of Zap in the April 24 Spectrum maintained some
frivolity about the event, but also hinted at impending problems.
While Bob Olson's column suggested titles for a possible song about
Zap, including "Moon Over Zap," and "By The Time I Get To Zap She'll
Be Laughing" (Spectrum, April 24, 1969). A news story headlined, "Zap
Story Goes National," announced that such papers as the Los
Angeles Times and the Chicago American had run stories
about the Zip to Zap (Spectrum, April 24, 1969).

The April 24 Spectrum also featured a 20-inch story
headlined, "First Annual Zap Picnic is Go For May 10," reporting the
contents of a cautiously hospitable letter from Zap Mayor Norman
Fuchs. The article adds:

The letter from Fuchs followed early rumors that the
people of Zap were arming themselves for the expected influx of
area college students. It now appears that the early rumors were
groundless. However, a small warning was included in the letter,
"We're a peace-loving community," it read, "and suggest that we'll
take strong measures to discourage riots" (Spectrum, April, 24,
1969).

Page one of the May 8 issue of the Spectrum, the last
before the Zip to Zap, contained a mixture of optimism and
trepidation in its speculation about the event, including a warning
about the possibility of an unruly crowd of between 3,400 and 6,500.
A 33-inch May 8 Spectrum story headlined, "National Exodus To
Zap Under Way," opens with quotes from Mayor Fuchs from a telephone
interview, saying how excited the town is about the Zip, and assuring
readers that "Zapis" are prepared for the festival.

Fuchs is also quoted as pointing out the need for law enforcement
officers, in order to avoid auto fatalities and to control
"riff-raff," who might attempt to join in the festival. Fuchs denies
in the article that he is considering calling in the North Dakota
National Guard, saying, "We'll have the sheriff and deputies here,
but they don't want to interfere with anyone's good time." The
remainder of the article is a report by ex-editor Carvell from Zap on
festival preparations, including details about food, music and
transportation. It also contains reports of students departing for
Zap from as far as Texas and Florida.

In the May 8 Spectrum story, Mayor Fuchs also announces a
"chug-a-lug" contest between NDSU and UND students, with each side to
get a 16 gallon keg of beer. The story ends with a quote from Fuchs
saying, "If you are looking for a good time, you are certain to find
it here. We have all the makings of the finest time ever for the
kids" (The Spectrum, May 8, 1969).

A story in the May 8 Spectrum headlined, "Missive
Warns--Beware the Sheriff of Zap," reports some of the "strange"
letters about Zap arriving in the newspaper's mail, including one
informing of a pending 1964 North Dakota Supreme Court case in which
a Mercer County law officer is accused of attaching one hand of a
murder suspect to a fence post, and the other to the winch of a
wrecker truck, "in order to obtain a confession." The story then says
that the suspect was reported to have been slapped and kicked
numerous times by the sheriff and a deputy. The Spectrum also
reported it had confirmed the details of the allegations in the case.
The last paragraph of the story, and the last thing published in the
Spectrum before the Zip to Zap, says, "Well, there it is. We imagine
that the system of justice in the area has since changed. At least we
hope so" (Spectrum, May 8, 1969).

National and local press commentary
in the aftermath of the Zip to Zap

The North Dakota state and campus press coverage immediately
following the Zip to Zap seems to reflect frustration that it didn't
turn out well. The tone of the commentary captures the general
disappointment that it wasn't the traditional spring student ritual
that North Dakotans had expected it to be. Newsweek and other
national media predictably mocked the innocence and provincialism of
North Dakotans, but accurately reported the state's disappointment in
the festival. In a May 19, 1969 article headlined, "ZAP!" (Newsweek,
May 19, 1969), the magazine gave the aftermath 7.5 inches of much
exaggerated commentary, including an inaccurate report about the
destruction of a Zap building, saying:

The youthful invaders virtually took over the
town&emdash;and nearly demolished it. They dismantled an abandoned
house and fed it piece by piece into a roaring bonfire in the
middle of Main Street .The invaders had swelled to 3,000 when
North Dakota's Gov. William Guy decided to send in the National
Guard. Martial law was declared, and at day-break Saturday, 500
guardsmen wielding wooden clubs swiftly cleared Zap of the
Zappies. But the damage had already been done. Surveying broken
glass, charred furniture and thousands of empty beer cans strewn
about Main Street, Sheriff Ivan Stiefeld of surrounding Mercer
County sadly observed of Zap's biggest day: They wrecked the whole
town."

The May 12 Bismarck Tribune in its page one story, "Zap
Mayor Looks Back: 'It Could Have Been A Wonderful Thing'," reports
that area officials and residents of Zap were assessing the lessons
of the Zip to Zap, with Mayor Fuchs saying he hadn't decided on
whether he should have called in more law enforcement before the
event. Most of the 40-inch news story details the deployment of the
National Guard and the perceived danger to the cities of Mandan and
Bismarck, where students rallied after being driven out of Zap. No
blame is placed on the student media, and the article says:

Fuchs said that students at North Dakota State
University, where the idea for the Zap-in started, and at the
University of North Dakota, have started fund drives to help the
town and he understood the rest of the colleges in North Dakota
would be asked to contribute. "It's just wonderful," he said in
regard to the fund drive (Bismarck Tribune, May 12, 1969).

The state media tended to blame non-students, or what the mayor
termed "riff-raff," for stirring up trouble at Zap. In a cut-line for
a photo of two desultory-looking young men sitting on a car hood
after being driven out of Zap, the Bismarck Tribune says,
"Some were there for the fun in it, and flourished the V-sign for
peace. Others like the dull-eyed punk at left with the whiskey
bottle, were ready to start trouble&emdash;when they thought it was
safe" (Bismarck Tribune, May 12, 1969). Cooper and Smith in their
history of the North Dakota National Guard state that:

The newspapers, which had commented so breezily on the
happening beforehand, now searched for causes for the turmoil. A
Fargo Forum reporter explained it best: "The quickest answer is
that these students were drunk out of their minds." Not a
political protest, not an organized attack on the establishment,
just kids from North Dakota State University, the University of
North Dakota, and Minot and Dickinson state colleges, he noted,
jeering and swearing at police and Guardsmen for the hell of it.
The spring party cost the state $25,768.58 and 970 Guardsmen a
quiet weekend (Cooper & Smith, 1986, p. 434).

Student press commentary
on the aftermath of the Zip to Zap

The Spectrum expressed no sense of responsibility for the
events at Zap in any of its commentary or reporting following the
festival, and National Guard deployment. In a 55-inch May 15, 1969,
page one story headlined, "Zap to Bismarck," staff writer Ron Wilner
downplays the student violence and irresponsibility displayed at Zap,
emphasizing how most students behaved in a restrained manner. He
reports that there was a complete lack of proper enforcement by
police, and says that law enforcement officers were largely
inexperienced and from out of town. "The scene was set. People were
looking for something to do," Wilner says, citing sources blaming
police for over-reacting to minor incidents. He blames Zap residents
for raising the cost of beer, for failing to provide adequate
facilities, and for general poor planning (Spectrum, May 15,
1969).

A 27-inch letter to the editor on May 15, written by incoming NDSU
student body president Butch Molm, headlined, "Who Must Take the
Blame For Zap?" begins:

Zap, the Grand Festival of Love and Life, is over now. We
have read the sensationalism; we have seen it over television. Who
is to blame? Kevin Carvell, since he wrote the story? The
Spectrum staff, since they thought up the picnic? The
Associated Press and its nationwide coverage, the business
establishments offering containers for all the necessities of life
in Zap? The National Guard, for using their bayonets to move the
students, the bar in Zap overcharging for beer, all the people who
moved in to make a profit selling sweatshirts, zapburgers,
buttons, and zip zap games? Now, SOME of these same people will
turn and say, "Damn college students, must be some Communist
agitators. Why, we didn't mean for this to happen. We thought the
kids were just going out to have a good time, drink a little beer,
maybe not to raise hell&emdash;and a good time could be had by
all." This is what people said BEFORE Zap! (Spectrum, May 15,
1969).

The remaining 21 inches ramble on about harassment by the National
Guard, damage to Zap businesses, and about lack of parental
responsibility. It concludes vaguely: "I think it's time we do a
little soul searching, be a little more aware of other people in this
world, realizing they have problems, they have ideas, goals and
ambitions."

The May 15, 1969, Spectrum editorial headlined "Zap is
Over," includes an attack on the other media reporting on Zap. It
begins by lamenting that things went badly and admitting that the
idea for the festival started at the Spectrum, but it goes no further
in assuming blame or responsibility. It says:

It started here, in the paper, but not as it was. We were
there on Friday, some of the Spectrum staff which had first
thought of the idea, and many others. They ask where we were when
the trouble started, when the windows were kicked in, when the
café was broken into. Many of us were in sleeping bags and
tents in the park. The town was across the "crick," and it was
cold. We didn't know (most of us) that the windows were being
kicked in. Perhaps lack of knowledge is no excuse, perhaps there
is no excuse for what happened, but there was no cry raised. The
radio and newspapers blew it out of proportion. False rumors came
in by the hour (Spectrum, May 15, 1969).

The second Spectrum editorial on May 15, headlined, "In
Support of the Mistic," illustrates that the other campus
paper in the area was still under assault from the Moorhead State
College administration. The editorial invokes the First Amendment to
decry MSC President Roland Dille's censorship of the Mistic.
It ends by saying, "Our sympathies are with the former Mistic,
now the Mystic. We hope it will continue its independent
publication."

The Spectrum's May 22 editorial headlined "Yes, Virginia,
There is a Zap&emdash;Still," further illustrates that the staff was
not admitting, at least in print, irresponsibility for the way it
conceptualized and promoted the event. Rather it blames what it calls
the "commercial media" for blowing the Zip to Zap out of proportion.
The editorial begins:

Now that The Zap Affair is over and things have settled
down, several matters come to light which are worth mentioning.
Let's not kid anyone&emdash;NDSU students were there and did take
part in all phases of the event. The accusation that we deny all
participation is really a bit more than unfounded. Lest anyone
take umbrage (that means offense) at this accusation, there does
exist enough evidence to show that commercial news media
misreported the Zap affair. Certainly their accounts were
exciting. Excitement does, after all, sell a great many papers.
Certainly, they upheld their "responsibility' to report the bad as
well as the good." However, a great deal of reporting was
completely out of balance with reality and in many cases patently
false (Spectrum, May 22, 1969).

The editorial challenges state and national media references to
Zap being "demolished" and to their reports of a "battle" between
students the National Guard. It goes on to suggest that the imagery
presented was sensationalized, and that exaggeration was used
primarily for commercial gain. The editorial is particularly critical
of the Associated Press, saying:

Then there's always the good old Associated Press. Early reports
of the AP (and certain radio reports as well) had students tearing
down buildings for the fire, completely destroying an automobile with
their fists and dismantling a fire truck. Then the facts show up. The
building had been torn down three weeks ago, the automobile was
apparently driven away intact (which is very difficult considering it
was reported destroyed), and the dismantled fire truck is very much
in one piece.

After further chastising the Associated Press for its inaccuracy
in reporting the correct geographical locations of various North
Dakota towns, the editorial goes on to criticize Zap coverage by
network television, concluding with:

The lesson to be learned is that pictures--even moving
pictures--do not always give a total picture of what is going
on .Consider, however, that it is from the news media that we
get all of our information on national and international affairs.
They hold a major key to our understanding of issues. In many
cases, the news media alone can influence the thoughts of an
entire nation by presenting events in such a light as to elicit a
certain reaction from the audience. When confronted with the
miserable job of reporting a true and balanced picture of the
weekend in Zap, what then are we to think when we are given
stories having to do with taxes, Viet Nam, racial disturbances,
school protests and the like? Perhaps the 'credibility gap' is not
limited to governmental agencies alone. In these times, news is of
vital importance to all of us. We have assumed that news presented
to us has been truthful and balanced. Perhaps it is time we begin
to question these assumptions (Spectrum, May 15, 1969).

The criticism of the Associated Press and of the other national
and state media, with regard to reporting on the damage at Zap,
appears well founded. This is particularly borne out in interviews
with a wide range of student leaders and Zap residents conducted for
Chris Breitling's excellent 1991 film documentary, Zap Revisited
(Breitling, 1991).

The May 22, 1969, Spectrum contains a letter from Mayor
Fuchs, headlined, "Zap Mayor Extends Thanks." In the letter he says
damage to the town was not great and he thanks the students of NDSU
and UND for sending relief funds. He details the damages to the two
bars in town and announces that Lucky's Bar, which received the most
damage, would re-open in about a week. Fuchs goes on to say:

To the college students who came to Zap to have a clean
good time: My sincere apologies for feeling compelled to call the
National Guard. I know you recognize that there was no other
choice after what happened. Please understand that I have not lost
faith in college people. The scum that got here on Friday stopped
the picnic for those good students already here and for those on
the way. I wanted so much for all to have a good time but it was
not meant to be. If it were to be done over, the Guard would again
be called, only earlier, I believe, just to prevent destruction
(Breitling, 1991).

Although it appeared that peace had been made between the students
and the citizens of Zap, it would be a long time before the town was
willing to host Zap reunions. Relatively large and peaceful
gatherings were held in Zap on the 1989 and 1999 anniversaries. Today
conflicting opinions remain regarding responsibility for what went
wrong with the festival. While some look back to the Zip to Zap with
humor and sentimentality, others vividly remember the images of
destruction and anarchy the media focused on. It is evident that once
the media projects such negative and exaggerated images, those images
can determine for decades the dominant public perception and popular
historical interpretation of a mass event, despite the greatest
efforts to revise and correct them.

Summary and conclusions

This article has outlined some of the major forces impacting
American campuses in the spring of 1969. It suggests how youthful
newspaper editors at several North Dakota and Minnesota universities
interpreted and filtered information about national mass movements.
It related how they encouraged their readers to collectively react to
these mass movements, as well as to the social, historical,
political, economic, and cultural forces driving them.

There was obviously a great deal of pressure on college students
with regard to making personal decisions about such momentous issues
as military conscription, continuation of the war in Southeast Asia,
expansion of nuclear confrontation, gross economic inequality, and
the delay in empowering American minorities. Student editors were
certainly a catalyst in processing relevant information on such large
issues. Their sources were often radically biased and ideologically
off center. These alternative sources, when used by student editors
to inform their opinion pages, effectively challenged young readers
to respond to or react against what was derisively termed the
"Establishment," embodying the status quo of the dominant national
consensus.

The burden on these student newspaper editors in carrying out such
heavy journalistic gatekeeping functions during the late 1960s and
early 1970s is well illustrated in this article, particularly by the
experiences of the editors of the NDSU Spectrum, the UND
Dakota Student, and the MSC Mistic.

In the course of brokering these major national and international
issues, the Zip to Zap was conceptualized and promoted by NDSU
student journalists. This suggests that perhaps their efforts at a
mature and seemingly unrelenting presentation of the tumultuous
issues and events of 1968-69 demanded some relief, taking the form of
a return to a more lighthearted and sophomoric type of student
journalism that the Zap promotion certainly was. This flippant
promotion and coverage of the Zip to Zap indicates a certain
unwillingness by student journalists to assume the level of social
responsibility and seriousness generally demanded within the
mainstream journalism profession. In many ways it was an exercise in
the license student journalists seem to cherish, to push the bounds
of social convention and to question authority until authority
re-establishes its dominance.

It is apparent that the North Dakota student media in 1969 were
unwilling to take responsibility for the failure of the Zip to Zap.
Those student journalists who promoted the festival tended to blame
the mainstream media for blowing the failure of the festival out of
proportion. Those interviewed for this study certainly objected to
framing the story as if the Zip to Zap corresponded to larger student
riots, or to confrontations with the National Guard and police on
campuses where student gatherings were routinely violent, and where
authorities were brutally repressive.

While most student protests and mass gatherings of 1969 reflected
national political events and issues, the Zip to Zap remains unique
to the era, in that if it was a form of political expression, it was
not an overt one. Rather it seemed to be either a throwback to spring
break behavior by earlier generations of hedonistic and politically
apathetic students, or a precursor to campus normalcy in the form of
unapologetic expressions of hedonism and uncivil student behavior
most evident in south Florida, Mexico, and other student holiday
destinations.

It appears that the Zip to Zap was an anomalous event in 1969,
when mass protest and student dissention were at their height.
Student editors today have relatively fewer gatekeeping burdens with
regard to brokering information on national and international issues
directly impacting college students. Certainly there is less of the
kind of tensions that in 1969 brought on by racial confrontation and
the Vietnam War.

Defenders of the North Dakota students who zipped to Zap in 1969
contend that damaging a couple of bars, breaking some windows,
starting bonfires, and littering Zap's streets, hardly warranted the
resulting media sensationalism and negative commentary, and that the
event was in many ways without an identifiable historical or social
context. To them, the Zip to Zap just happened.

But others who were at Zap say there were detectable social forces
and tensions in 1969 that unified students in both violent and
non-violent ways. The greatest evidence that there was a greater need
in the late 1960s for the young to gather, and to express their
opposition to such dominant social forces as war, racism, and mass
violence, was the Woodstock Festival, occurring just four months
after the Zip to Zap.

Beginning on August 14, 1969, an estimated 450,000 mostly young
people gathered peacefully at a Woodstock, N.Y., farm, with no better
accommodations than were provided at Zap, and with similarly poor
weather. The answer as to why Woodstock succeed where the Zip to Zap
failed, blows in the prairie winds.